What Is Kale?

September/October 2011

Kale recipes, ideas for cooking with kale and kale health benefits.

Kale recipes, ideas for cooking with kale and kale health benefits.

Lately, green bumper stickers have been popping up all over, proclaiming “Eat More Kale.” We were inclined to write them off
as just another quirk of our hippie home state of Vermont, but then we chatted with their creator, the ponytailed and
mustachioed designer Bo Muller-Moore. He accidentally created the trend when some friends asked him to whip up a few T-shirts
for a local farmers’ market. Demand snowballed, and soon he was working full-time to fill orders from South Africa, Iraq and
even Siberia. It turns out that kale is having a moment, with A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Hendricks and Alex
Rodriguez all recently touting the vogue veggie.

The recipes are getting a make­over to match. So throw out your old conception of kale as an earnest, bitter health-leaf; our
dishes show it for the versatile super­food it really is. Enjoy it as a crunchy snack as addictive as potato chips or as part
of a hearty, bright salad with mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, smoky bacon and tangy vinaigrette. You can even drink your kale:
our Green Smoothie offers a refreshing blend of banana,
pear and a full cup of greens. Best of all, it’s almost absurdly healthy. On top of delivering a raft of cancer-fighting
antioxidants, it’s one of the world’s best sources of vitamin A, which promotes eye and skin health and may help strengthen
the immune system—why wouldn’t you eat it?